On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to decide whether all the female employees who claim Walmart discriminated against them can sue the world's largest retailer as a class, and if they can, whether they can sue for back pay or only for judicial orders to force it to change its behavior.

Cisco Systems (CSCO) and Westcon Group North America agreed to pay $48 million to settle charges they paid kickbacks and referral fees to win government business, and then recouped those costs and more by overcharging the government for their services.

Pharmaceutical firm Allergan has settled criminal and civil charges that it promoted Botox for uses the FDA hadn't approved, agreeing to pay $600 million and enter into a "corporate integrity agreement." Allergan also dropped its related First Amendment lawsuit against the FDA.

Carl Greene ran the Philadelphia Housing Authority for years with little oversight, until recent revelations about a series of scandals from sexual harassment to financial mismanagement landed him in hot water. But Greene's misdeeds may be just a symptom of the problematic culture of U.S. housing authorities.

Now that credit rating agencies can be sued for issuing inflated ratings, they're refusing to allow their ratings to be used to sell bonds. Unfortunately, since some types of bonds are required to have such ratings, those parts of the bond market are shutting down.

Goldman Sachs earnings fell sharply in the second quarter, hurt by its $550 million settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission and a U.K. payroll tax, but on an adjusted basis, the investment bank's profits easily topped Wall Street estimates.

In the settlement of a lawsuit that predates the financial meltdown, AIG has agreed to pay shareholders $725 million for years of fraudulent practices that led to investors loosing money on the stock. But they only get $175 million up front. The rest, they may wind up getting in shares of AIG.

Dell has reportedly proposed a settlement to the Securities and Exchange Commission that the SEC staff likes and will recommend the commissioners accept. At issue is how Dell did its accounting on deals with Intel. Dell has already been forced to restate four years of manipulated earnings.

Goldman Sachs shares have jumped some 4.7% in premarket trading to around $152following the announcement of an agreement with the SEC for a record $550 million settlement over fraud claims linked to the subprime mortgage investment known as Abacus.

Pharmaceutical giant Novartis lost a huge gender discrimination case in May, and faced $250 million in punitive damages, plus possibly hundreds of millions more in compensatory damages. Rather than deal with years of appeals, both sides settled Wednesday for $152 million.

GlaxoSmithKline, whose diabetes drug Avandia is undergoing a safety review by the FDA, has agreed to pay about $460 million to resolve about 10,000 lawsuits from users of the drug, which can allegedly cause heart attacks and strokes.

Is District Court Judge Mariana Pfaelzer about to throw out the massive Countrywide Financial settlement that has been negotiated between new owner Bank of America and the lender's former shareholders?

Some 10,000 rescue and cleanup workers at Ground Zero, the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, have negotiated a new settlement with New York City that gives them more money for the illnesses and injuries they sued over.